Sep. 12, 2013
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Pistachio Coconut Frosting. Matt Wittmeyer

Written by

Staff writer

The beginning of this year, I vowed to make the Recipe of the Week column reflect healthier ways to cook and eat.

So how is it possible to include a recipe from The Dollop Book of Frosting (Adams Media, $18.99), the new cookbook by 2012 Cupcake Wars winner Heather Saffer?

While interviewing Saffer, we talked about the foods we love to cook most. For Saffer, it’s all about frostings. Me, I love cooking with vegetables.

Could frosting and vegetables get along, I pondered. In Saffer’s world, they already do. Following the recipe for raspberry buttercream is her version of spinach “salad.” (Quotation marks are hers.) She uses a dab of frosting to glue a cocoa and sugar-coated almond to a baby lettuce leaf “salad spoon.”

Appetizer or dessert? It could go either way.

I decided to use one of her frostings as a dip for a vegetable crudités platter.

One of the best-selling toppings at Dollop Gourmet Cupcake Creations in Penfield, which Saffer ran for several years, was a pistachio-coconut frosting. It was basically a buttercream with pistachios and shredded coconut added to it.

For her book, Saffer “healthified” the frosting by deleting the butter and confectioners’ sugar for unrefined coconut oil and coconut palm sugar. Proponents say that while non-hydrogenated coconut oil is a saturated fat, it can actually protect against heart disease. The health claim for coconut palm sugar is that it has a significantly lower glycemic index than conventional sugar.

(The American Heart Association’s website makes no claim that coconut oil is healthier than other saturated fats, and the American Diabetic Association’s website says people with diabetes should use coconut palm sugar the same way they would regular sugar.)

I’m not so sure those health claims tell the whole story, but what I can say with certainty is that unrefined coconut oil has a sweet, coconut taste that I love, while coconut palm sugar has a deep, complex flavor that is more akin to brown sugar. And the frosting, which has the slightly chunky-grainy consistency of a stiff hummus, is really fun and delightful, even with raw vegetables.

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Does eating frosting with vegetables turn it into health food? Hardly. But there are some nutritional perks that make this a non-traditional dessert or appetizer worth considering. You are replacing a high-calorie, nutrient-weak cupcake with low-calorie, nutrient-dense vegetables.

Saffer confesses she has never followed a recipe to the T. That made me feel better when I forgot to pick up pistachios at the store and decided to use the cashews I already had on hand. This was a great frosting/dip with cashews, and I imagine it will be even better with pistachios.

I initially put the vegetables and frosting tray on the dessert table at a potluck gathering, but it quickly got crowded out by peach pie and other legitimate desserts, so I moved it over with the savory foods. I never told anyone what the dip was, but eavesdropped for the reaction.

Nobody was expecting sweet, even though several people identified the coconut right away. But people seemed to like it, and I watched several go back for seconds.

When I finally told them where I got the recipe, they laughed and nodded.

One of them even said, “Yeah, I’d put that on a cupcake.”

Pistachio Coconut Frosting

From The Dollop Book of Frosting by Heather Saffer (Adams Media, $18.99). When I made this recipe, I swapped dry-roasted cashews for pistachios and used unsweetened shredded coconut without adding any extra coconut palm sugar. It was plenty sweet. And delicious.

Preheat oven to 300 degrees. Grind pistachios to a fine powder in a food processor.

Spread ½ cup of the coconut evenly onto a parchment paper-lined baking sheet and bake for about 5 to 6 minutes, or until lightly browned. Remove from the oven and let cool.

In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, mix coconut oil until softened, about 3 to 5 minutes. Add pistachios, palm sugar, and all the coconut and continue mixing another 5 minutes or until creamy and soft and ingredients are well combined. This is a thicker, chunkier frosting.

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Makes about 1½ cups.

Rippled Raw Vegetable Chips

Soaking thinly sliced raw vegetables in cold water for a couple of hours will make them crsip up and gently ripple in a pretty fashion. The best vegetables to use are large carrots and radishes, and medium or small beets, kohlrabi and turnips. The vegetables should have a diameter of at least an inch and a half so they will be able to handle and dip easily. Carrots, beets, turnips and kohlrabi should be peeled. The radishes should be scrubbed clean.

Slice the vegetables on a mandoline set at 1⁄8inch. (If you have good knife skills, you can also do this with a knife, but it may take a little longer.) Put the vegetables in a bowl or container big enough to fit the vegetables and cover them with an inch of cold water and a few ice cubes. Beets should be placed in a separate bowl so their color won’t bleed into another vegetable. Cover the bowl or container with plastic wrap, cover or dish and then refrigerate for a couple hours or overnight.

Shortly before you are ready to eat them, drain the vegetables in a colander and gently pat dry with clean dish towels or paper towels.